This is actually the tale of two huckleberries so we'll address the botanical one before moving into that of the literary examples.

The huckleberry is the state fruit of Idaho.

From a botanical perspective, huckleberry is the commonly used name for several plants in the family Ericaceae, notably two closely-related genera, "Vaccinium" and "Gaylussacia" — based on the genus and species the tastes vary but botanists rarely eat their studies so we'll skip that part.

If you've never seen a wild one, the berries are small and round, 5-10 mm in diameter and look like large (relatively) dark blueberries. Some are tart and some are sweet (much like teenage girls as I recall dimly).

Huckleberries are found tasty by birds, deer, humans and bears. Never disturb a bear with blue/purple chops.

Red huckleberries can be found in the maritime-influenced plant community from coastal Central California to southern Washington and British Columbia. If you wander inward in an easterly direction to the mountains of Montana and Idaho, you will find black and blue huckleberries in mid-alpine regions up to 11,500 feet in elevation.

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The plants grow best in damp acidic soil having volcanic origin, explaining their presence in the coastal Northwest. They can grow to heights of one to two meters.

Naturally, if they're a tasty flavor in today's yogurt, the First Nations people discovered them decades ago as both food and in traditional medicine. The little berries are very versatile and can be processed into a number of food products such as: juice, tea, syrup, jam, pudding, candy, pie and muffins. Not to mention yogurt or ice cream.

Interestingly, limited research has been done to identify the content of essential nutrients in huckleberries and they don't appear to have a high content of stuff good for you. Yet, they do taste good and who are we to argue with bears about nutrients.

The first American settlers who encountered them compared them to the English bilberry and called them hurtleberries or hirtleberries or even whortleberries. With those as choices (hurt or whort because of their dark blue bruiselike nature) it's easy to understand while huckleberry emerged as the winner.

Did I mention they're not a true fruit but instead a drupe, which we've encountered in a prior column. With that in mind, I will address their presence in the entertainment culture in the next column, perhaps after another breakfast sampling.

• I suppose Richard Nixon was just kidding when he said, "It's the responsibility of the media to look at the president with a microscope, but they go too far when they use a proctoscope."

Jim Willard, a Loveland resident since 1967, retired from Hewlett-Packard after 33 years to focus on less trivial things. He calls Twoey, his bichon frisé-Maltese dog, vice president of research for his column.